How athlete politicians and sports ballot measures fared on election day

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent!

We’ve got a special bonus edition of the newsletter for you today, covering the results of all kinds of sports-related ballot initiatives and politicians running for office.

This is not an entirely exhaustive list—do not come at me for excluding Abdul El-Sayed (who played club lacrosse in college) or an NFL punter who I don’t remember that ran for state legislature. Vote totals may change slightly from what we have here as final vote counts come in.

We’ll start with ballot initiatives, since they have a more direct impact on sports policies.

Stadium taxes: In Plano, Texas, voters rejected several tax increases that would have helped fund a new development, including an arena for the Dallas Stars. The tax increases included a 2 percent tax on hotel rooms, a 5 percent tax on car rentals, an event parking tax of $3 per car, and up to a 10 percent tax on tickets. Athletes themselves would have been taxed too, paying a $5,000 “facility-use tax” for each game played at the new arena.

Over in Inglewood, California, the vote on an expanded ticket tax for SoFi Stadium, Intuit Dome, and Kia Forum is extremely tight—50.76 percent of voters have sided with no tax increases, but votes are still being counted. Also, in McKinney, Texas, the school district asked to issue a $2.5 million bond to upgrade its 12,000-capacity football stadium. Voters rejected the idea, with almost 70 percent against.

Transgender athletes: Nebraska passed a ballot initiative, with 68 percent in favor, requiring public schools, and private schools competing against public schools, to designate their sports teams by biological sex (coed included as an option). It also bans males from participating in female sports. A similar measure in Colorado seems likely to pass, but has just 52.7 percent support with an estimated 88 percent of votes counted. Arizona already has a law like this for K-12 public schools, but Proposition 318—which passed with 59 percent of the vote—extends it to private schools, colleges, and athletic association facilities (like Little League). In Washington State, Measure 638 has similar prohibitions, and it passed with 57 percent of the vote. The new law will require female athletes to submit sex verification documents from their doctor or healthcare provider.

Online sports betting: Two ballot initiatives sought to legalize online sports betting in Nebraska, but they both failed with about 55 percent of the vote against. Nebraska has legal sports betting, but only at in-person, physical sportsbook locations.

Sporting goods tax: Colorado voted on Proposition 137, to divert a portion of the sales tax on sporting goods to be spent on environmental conservation. With 87 percent of votes counted, the measure is leading narrowly with 50.8 percent support.

Sales tax for stadium trains: A portion of Colorado cities voted to collectively approve Proposition 7A, which will create a 0.333 percent sales tax in those cities to be spent on a passenger rail system that will have stations at, among other places, Colorado’s major sports stadiums.

Of course, federal legislation wasn’t on the ballot, but with Democrats taking over so much of the government in January, you have to think they’ll have no interest in backing the carefully negotiated Protect College Sports Act in its current form. They can just wait until January and try to get a better deal (though they would still need President Donald Trump’s signature then, unless they can get some GOP help to overcome his veto).

“If you want a quote, here it is,” the aide said, “the NIL bill is dead on f****** arrival.”

It’s time for college sports to move on from the PCSA. https://t.co/bQrf5FEcM2

— Mit Winter (@WinterSportsLaw) November 5, 2026

Now for the politician-athletes who ran for office:

Senate

Minnesota Senate: Former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya, running as a Republican, lost her race with 44 percent of the vote.

Iowa Senate: Josh Turek, a wheelchair-bound Paralympian, won two gold medals with the U.S. men’s national wheelchair basketball team. On Election Day, he won again as a Democrat, with 51 percent of the vote.

Nebraska Senate: Incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, won with 50 percent of the vote. The Ricketts family—led by Pete’s father—are owners of the Chicago Cubs.

New Jersey Senate: Incumbent Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, is now much more well-known as a senator than he was as a Stanford tight end, but just to cover our bases, he won reelection with 62 percent of the vote.

Governor

Alabama Governor: Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican, decided to run for governor instead of the Senate again, and he won with 52 percent of the vote. Tuberville was a well-known college football head coach for two decades combined at Ole Miss, Auburn, Texas Tech, and Cincinnati.

Massachusetts Governor: Incumbent Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, won reelection with 62 percent of the vote. Healey was co-captain of Harvard’s basketball team and spent two years playing professional basketball in Europe in the 1990s.

Nebraska Governor: Incumbent Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, won reelection with 51 percent of the vote. He was a defensive back at Nebraska under Tom Osborne and was inducted into the school’s Football Hall of Fame long before his political career.

Vermont Governor: Incumbent Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican who won lower-level stock car racing championships and competed as recently as 2022, won reelection with 53 percent of the vote.

House of Representatives

Ohio’s 4th Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican, won reelection with 64 percent of the vote. He announced on Wednesday that he’ll run to be minority leader for Republicans in the new Congress. Jordan won two national championships for wrestling in the 1980s, though he became an assistant coach and was accused of enabling sexual misconduct (Jordan denies this).

Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Tom Emmer, currently the House Majority Whip for Republicans, won reelection with 56 percent of the vote. Emmer, who grew up in the hockey hotbed of Minnesota, played college hockey at both Boston College and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Arizona’s 1st Congressional District: Former NFL kicker Jay Feely, running as a Republican, lost with 45 percent of the vote. Coincidentally, he lost to Amish Shah, who was team physician for the New York Jets when Feely was on the team.

Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Sharice Davids, a Democrat who had a brief professional MMA career, won reelection with 60 percent of the vote.

Massachusetts’ 3rd Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Lori Trahan, a Democrat, won reelection with 67 percent of the vote. She played volleyball at Georgetown and is in her high school’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Minnesota’s 8th Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Pete Stauber, a Republican, won reelection with 53 percent of the vote. Stauber played on the Lake Superior State(!) national championship hockey team in 1988. He went on to play minor league hockey but never made the NHL.

Texas’ 4th Congressional District: Incumbent Rep. Pat Fallon, a Republican who won a national championship under Lou Holtz on Notre Dame’s 1988 national championship team, won with 56 percent of the vote.

Texas’ 21st Congressional District: MLB legend Mark Teixeira, running as a Republican, won this district north of San Antonio with 55 percent of the vote. (Automatic home run in the Congressional Baseball Game every year?)

Texas’ 33rd Congressional District: Colin Allred, who went undrafted but played 32 games for the Tennessee Titans, won this Dallas-area district with a whopping 79 percent of the vote. He’s a Democrat.

Now for some people who you may remember running but didn’t get past their primaries:

• Former college football coach Derek Dooley and former NBA first-round pick Royce White (both Republicans) were at one point running for Senate (in Georgia and Minnesota, respectively), but they were eliminated in primaries earlier this year. 
• The father of Cubs third baseman Alex Bregman ran for governor of New Mexico but lost in the Democratic primary.
• Tiffany Glenn Burress, the wife of NFL legend Plaxico Burress (apparently the 46th greatest New York Giant of all time!), ran for Congress as a Republican in New Jersey but lost in the primary.